GERMANY’S CHEAP PRODUCTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 May 1921, Page 4

GERMANY’S CHEAP PRODUCTS.

The United States authorities have awakened to the seriousness of the menace to American industries as the result of Germany’s tactics designed to capture the markets of the world. According to Mr. Hoover (United States Secretary of Commerce) fifty thousand million marks of Germany’s wealth is being devoted to subsidising German productions, which are being manufactured in large quantities and sold cheaply. This state of affairs was known to be going on as part of Germany’s trade penetration policy, but as there exists a disposition not to press unduly hard on the vanquished nation, no concerted effort has been made to deal with the menace. It is the irony of fate that America should be aroused to take protective action against this economic, phase of German industrial expansion, and the example of the United States may well be followed by other countries. The adoption of a protective tariff and fixing an American valuation on imported German goods form a dou-ble-barrelled weapon for dealing with heavily-subsidised German goods. The trade depression which exists in America and elsewhere renders protection absolutely essential to the welfare of the workers, for cheap foreign goods, however desirable from the consumer’s point of view, mean unemployment, and its resultant troubles. The problem is a serious one, but it, would be most desirable that it should be faced and solved before the evil grows out of -hand. The Government can and should do its part in protecting the workers, but the latter must also bpar a hand in the solution by agreeing to accept less wages and so reduce the cost of home products. Only by such means can any permanent safety for the interests of the workers be obtained. Enough is known of German methods to justify the position being 1 taken seriously, otherwise the future will hold much that will adversely affect the workers.